How conspiracy theories feed political fragmentation

President
Donald Trump, accompanied by Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, speak in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in
Washington Tuesday, May 16, 2017.Evan
Vucci/AP

Conspiracy theories are all the rage these days.

Barely a day goes by without someone accusing someone else of
engaging in fake news, post-truths, witch hunts and organized
political skulduggery.

But they have been with us for a long time, influencing public
opinion and major historic events. The Nazi regime continuously
resorted toanti-Semitic conspiracy
theoriesin its vile mission.

More recently, President Bashar al-Assad
suppressedprotests in Daraa, which he saw as a
conspiracy, triggering the Syrian Civil War.

Everyday use of the term "conspiracy theory" is a pejorative one.
It generally describes what we consider to be a false belief held
by strange people. So how do they have any influence on public
opinion or political events?

To try and find out, Iexamined the impactof
official conspiracy theories on theGezi Park protests in Turkey. This wave of
demonstrations and violent rebuttals in May and June 2013 began
as a small resistance to the attempt to demolish the Gezi Park in
Taksim, one of the few green areas in central Istanbul.

On May 28, around 50 protesters camped in the park as part of a
group effort to prevent its demolition. Police raided the camp
twice andburned the protestors’ tents. This aggression
in turn provoked a dramatic spread of the protests, which brought
together a wide range of political and civil groups and many more
people.

Demonstrators
shout nationalist slogans during a protest in front of the
headquarters of the Hurriyet daily newspaper in Istanbul, Turkey,
September 8, 2015.Selcuk
Samiloglu/Hurriyet Daily/Reuters

The reaction of the Turkish government was a concerted attempt to
discredit the social movement as a foreign conspiracy. The then
prime minister (now president) Recep Tayyip
Erdoğanclaimed the protestwas the
result of a conspiracy by foreign financial groups attempting to
hinder Turkish economic progress.

To understand the effect of this argument on public
opinion,I analyzed online conversations about the
interest rate lobby on the most popular discussion website in
Turkey,Ekşi Sözlük, and their interpretations of the
conspiracy account.

Most of the contributors who agreed with the official conspiracy
theory idea simply expressed their belief that the government was
correct in identifying a foreign plot.

Those who rejected the government’s argument either argued that
the government was wrong, or was inventing the conspiracy for
political ends. One commented that it was "a good example of
inventing an imaginary enemy."

But then looking at the online commentators’ previous postings, I
discovered that political stance provided a solid prediction of
how they would respond to the official suggestion of a
conspiracy. In other words, if the online users were
pro-government before the protests, they tended to believe in the
official conspiracy account. If they were critical of the
government, they tended to reject the conspiracy rhetoric.

Fueling the fire

Conspiracy theories are not just harmless irrational beliefs.
They have serious impact, and can be used entirely rationally to
justify political views.

And because people are likely to interpret conspiracy theories in
line with their political values and interests, this can increase
political fragmentation.

As conspiracy theories blame certain groups for wrongdoing, they
can embolden existing political divisions between groups.

In the Turkish case, this was clear. The official conspiratorial
frames concerning theGezi Park protestshave
contributed to national political fragmentation by adding to
disagreements between government supporters and opponents.

This fragmentation is plainly visible in the Turkish government’s
current attempt to clamp down on anyone they choose to blame for
conspiring in the failed coup attempt of July 2016. Judges,
teachers and journalists haveall been arrestedfor
alleged sympathy with the coup.

Whether it’s in Hitler’s Germany, Assad’s Syria, or contemporary
Turkey, the official use of conspiracy rhetoric is a powerful
political tool. It increases tensions and deepens division.
Conspiracy theories are not just for crackpots and people with
vivid imaginations – they are far more serious than that.